


The Orator

by LearaBribage



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables (TV 2000), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo, The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Sandman!AU, also neil gaiman owns my heart because feels, and also pygmalion, enjonine - Freeform, heavily inspired by grrm and neil gaiman on this, my attempts at writing enjonine again, my fé/els be damned, well i tried to make it like that at least, what if enjolras was taken under the wing by one of the Endless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 14:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15865476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LearaBribage/pseuds/LearaBribage
Summary: Sir Orator. That's what they called him. It didn't sound right, though. There must have been something else they called him, and he just forgot. But what did it matter, anyway? (A Sandman x Les Misérables crossover of sorts.)





	The Orator

**Author's Note:**

  * For [decembersiris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/decembersiris/gifts), [Aurelia_Combeferre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurelia_Combeferre/gifts), [dutchmoxie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dutchmoxie/gifts), [diasterisms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/diasterisms/gifts), [short-macciato](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=short-macciato), [SaoirseVictoire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaoirseVictoire/gifts).



_Sir Orator._ That's what they called him. It didn't sound right, though. There must have been something else they called him, and he just forgot. He simply couldn't answer to it, and every time, someone had to tap him on the shoulder, tease him, or mock him. On the rare occasion, there was one during a ball where swords nearly met in a twisted sense of a dance.  
  
But what did it matter, anyway? He was good at being the Orator, and all those in the Kingdom depended on him. Every day from first light to night fall, he read and wrote and revised and practised his speeches to raise the valour of the people living within these halls. Every day, he stood by the courts and reasoned to fight for peace. Every day. Yet none of it truly mattered to him.  
  
He was strolling through the Garden of Joy, where there were beds of every kind of flower. Forget-me-nots, white stargazer lilies, carnations, hydrangeas, and chrysanthemums among others. His eyes would always drink in the richness of their colours, a stark contrast to the obsidian marble halls and pillars of the palace. A faint curl formed on his lips, then, for he was always invigorated because of their beauty.  
  
However, in spite of these, he seemed to incline more towards the bushes of roses, which surrounded a statue of a lady dressed in a mourning garb as she held a rose in her hand that was placed over her heart. He paid the marble piece little mind, for he was far more interested in the display that was all around him. It was all arranged ever so comely, for the gardeners have made it so that they appeared in striking circles at the heart of the garden. But he did wonder all the time why there were no red roses allowed by His Majesty.  
  
One of the gardeners patient enough to reply told him sweetly, "It invites men to seek bloodlust and maidens to weep for evermore. It is so decreed, but if it really is such a matter to you, perhaps an audience with the King could satisfy you, Sir Orator."  
  
His brows started to rise until he remembered himself and simply thanked him before nodding in polite disinterest.  
  
And it shouldn't matter, no, especially to the Orator, but it made him even more curious.  
  
Especially today.  
  
For some reason, he couldn't stop hearing someone playing what seemed like an unfinished song on a piano near his chambre, and he had shrugged it off as some musician composing a piece for the name day of the King. It was going to happen in a fortnight, he heard from a noblewoman whose face he can’t recall. But it's just that it sounded so familiar a tune. He couldn't parse it in better terms, as music was not his strongest suit, but still it haunted his evenings because whoever it was kept playing until he had fallen asleep.  
  
That was where his curiosity about the flower started, it seemed. His dreams of a red rose began when that still unfinished song became a part of his lonely nights. It was absurd, and he would not want to admit it, but to shrug it off, he had treated it as a sort of lullaby to carry him to slumber.  
  
But there it was, always a part of his dream. The red rose, solitary as it was on a glass vase, always showed up on top of the table near his bed. It was annoying because whatever he dreamt of, it always, always ended with that picture in his head.  
  
And the first time he woke up with that, he sought it out first thing in the morning and found nothing lying on that damned table. He had then thought it immaterial until it kept happening every single night.  
  
He knew that it was better not to have tried looking for it again earlier, but it was just so real, so near, so familiar that when he saw nothing once more, the devastating emptiness had influenced his wretched appearance today. Of all days. When he had finally decided to do as that gardener said, which was to ask for an audience with the King.  
  
He was damned to practise his speeches, anyway, and he walked towards the throne room, not caring if people stared at his red-rimmed lids and sneered at the disheveled display of his black cloak. There was a long line seeking His Majesty, but he did not mind it because as far as he was concerned, missed meals and piles of folios could not rival the mystery that he could not find an answer to.  
  
Nightfall had come, and that was only when he was admitted presence in front of the King. He watched those sable eyes follow him from the door until he was in front of him. Bowing, he sensed wariness radiating off the monarch with the way his mouth pursed on his ever pale countenance.  
  
"Rise, Sir Orator," said the King slowly, all his syllables enunciated clearly yet softly. "You look miserable. Tell me, what is it you seek?"  
  
Now that he was given the opportunity to speak of his troubles, it just seemed so facile when the King looked at him patiently in silence as he waited for an answer. Steeling himself, he thought that it was at least better to know. He just wanted to be sure about the occurrences happening to him. To be corrected would be even all right with him.

But if he was _right_ ... he wondered if the King would even grant him what he would then ask.  
  
Raising his head, he began, "Your Grace, I have come here to plead for your attention on two things. First, the mystery on the red rose, and second, the court musician has been quite obstinate with playing his unfinished song every night near my chamber for the past weeks. I seek understanding, and so a clarification would suffice, Your Grace."  
  
The King showed no emotion after he finished speaking and only motioned for his attendant to bring forth something. Or someone, he hoped.  
  
"You have a broad mind, Sir Orator, and it greatly pleases the kingdom to have you in our service, but I trust that your queries harbor no malice against the throne?" the King asked upon the arrival of the gardener who advised him of this occurrence.  
  
"No, Your Grace," he appeased, bowing his head. "It simply is to satiate a curiosity."  
  
"Very well," the King said. "You are aware of the adage towards curiosities, I'm certain?"  
  
He nodded. It was a subject of interest to him as it supports his theory that the power of all parlance -- particularly, courtly parlance -- lies in conjunctions. "In modern texts, it has been cut down to be simply 'curiosity killed the cat', but source materials always had it in fully as 'curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back'."  
  
"Well said, Sir Orator. So spare me the courtesies with the matter, and tell me what truly is your concern."  
  
He was certain an incarnadine line had appeared on his cheeks in embarrassment, but he had expected this of the ever-seeing King. But this was important for him. Or he thought it should.  
  
"Your Grace, I wish to know from whence I came from?" he pleaded, his voice rising in spite of his will to measure it as he was known for.  
  
The King gestured for him to continue, and he breathed more easily.  
  
"I have been having dreams of red roses, which are decreed to be largely absent, and it all started with the musician making that piece for your name day. I know it must be new, but something tells me that it is familiar to me. I seek to set my mind at ease from these strange occurrences, Your Grace."  
  
The King eyed him levelly. "I thank you for bringing this to me, Sir Orator. And I trust that our gardener, Sir Quintus, has explained why the matter is with the red roses. Perhaps it has occupied your thoughts as of late, as I recall that you favour the rose bushes when you are strolling for inspiration for your speeches, and mayhap your mind seeks what is not present there? Moreover, it has also come to my notice that you have been very diligent in speech-crafting until evening, and that could be reason for you to be bothered with Sir Len's music?"  
  
All rational answers, he knew, and he could understand it. And he has debated himself about it. But it does not answer why does it feel so ominous and strange to hear that particular song every night!  
  
"I will agree with the red rose, Your Grace, but that song, I feel like I know it, and I do not understand how or why. And I simply wish to know," he pleaded once more.  
  
It is with this statement that the King laughed in ill taste. "Aye, it appears that I can finally grant you the death you have always wanted. Come with us, Sir Orator, I shall explain."  
  
Suffice to say, he was perplexed, but he followed the King and Sir Quintus to the Garden of Joy.  
  
Once they arrived, the King ordered that all who were presently inhabiting the garden leave the vicinity for the mean time. At their departure, the King snapped his fingers, and suddenly the Garden of Joy was no longer how it appeared to him before.  
  
The vibrant lilies and chrysanthemums were still there, but for some reason, an ominous glow now seemed to emanate from its petals. He turned to Sir Quintus to scrutinise his reaction, but found only a calm yet eerie expression on his countenance.  
  
He made sure to focus on the King's next moves to ease himself instead. Predictably, the King led them to the rose bushes he favoured, but what he did not understand was the question that was brought up by the monarch after they ceased walking.

“Do you know the name of this statue, Sir Orator?”

“Mourning Lady of the Roses,” he said, scrutinising the figure apprehensively. His head was starting to ache, and he could feel the sweat drip in his collar.

Beside him, Sir Quintus’s forehead started to crease. He couldn’t understand why. _Yet._ The King observed their reactions as a dangerous glint shone in his eyes.

“I thought you would have figured it out already, given the sobriquet of the statue, but it appears that Sir Len’s music have worked too well in adjusting your memories,” the monarch explained, his hand resting on the hand of the lady that was holding a rose over her heart.  
  
His hands balled into fists, as if by instinct. He surmised the matter had something to do with the statue, but he wasn’t certain what the source of it was.

“I don’t recall a lot of things, and I keep forgetting to answer to the name people here call me by. I know that what you have kept calling me and ‘Sir Quintus’ are merely nominal façades, Your Grace,” he contested tersely.

A dangerous smirk appeared on the face of the King, who removed his hand from the statue. “Oh, what would you have been, had you been of the Endless.”

Magic, he could grasp, but this concept? Terribly, and all of it a loss to him.

Seeing that he showed no recognition of this fact, the King shrugged. “I will not detail that to you, since it would be too much for someone like you. I admire how quickly you got it, though. Some have taken three decades to realise something was wrong with who they were here, in this place. Yet it took you a year. But that’s hardly surprising, given that you are a visionary. Gifted with words and the picture of future.”

“Then who--?” the words died in his throat because nothing made sense. But he surmised that the King would explain it soon enough. He turned to Sir Quintus only to see that he had become immobile. “Your Grace, what’s happened to him?”

The King raised a hand, and suddenly Sir Quintus was surrounded by a dark mist all over his body before he disappeared, leaving only a trail of smoke after him. “It’s not his time to Know, young one. He will earn it as you have. Now, do you wish for the truth?”

He fought against the shiver in his limbs, and stared at the King directly. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“You were known as Enjolras, a student-leader revolutionary during the June Rebellion of 1832, and you died fighting for it. Well, you _and_ your friends,” the dark-eyed King said.

 _That_ was his name, he was sure, and he was glad of it. But he could not be fully happy as he was certain that some of his friends included ‘Sir Quintus’ and ‘Sir Len’.  How many more had he met and talked to at length, and not realised that they were the faces of his friends, his brothers?

Oh, if guilt were a knife stabbed upon his back, he would have lived here in this strange realm only to be killed again and again for the disrespect he showed the people he has vowed to always care about.

The King continued, uncaring of how he had received the news in shock. “The people your coterie tried to rally with you didn’t come to your aid, and all the factions ultimately failed to hold the barricades. You came under my care at the request of my sister who told me you would be instrumental in convincing people to do what they usually won’t do. I did not lie when I said that we are greatly pleased by your service.”

Enjolras bowed his head in silence, trying to rationalise his ambivalent feelings towards the abbreviated story given by the King. Because now that he brought it up, his mind was a flood of all those memories. He closed his eyes briefly, loosening his fists.

“I thank Your Grace for the truth,” he said slowly, trying to keep himself together. Then he eyed the Mourning Lady of the Roses and found that his mind still could not piece her together in all that the King revealed. “But what of the statue?”

“She was the first to fall in your cause, Enjolras,” the King supplied, now staring at him sadly. “You did not know each other well, and you knew then that she went there for a man when she died, but all the same, you have carried her death the hardest in your heart, whether or not you have admitted it.”

He did not know how, but a name settled on his tongue.

“Éponine,” the crack in his voice heartbreakingly evident that even the dark-eyed King looked to the ground in sorrow.

“One of my sisters have once mused that you two would have made something beautiful after all the destruction that followed your deaths,” the King remarked at length, and Enjolras raised a brow.

He was still eyeing the statue forlornly, and that statement made him pause.

“Enjolras, since you have proven yourself diligent in your service to the Endless, whether you knew it or not, we have decided to ease both of your sufferings,” the dark-eyed King said.

He had wanted to touch the hand of Éponine -- marble sculpture or not, it did not matter. Enjolras deigned to at least give her any form of gratitude he could provide. But that would have to wait, apparently. “What do you mean, Your Grace?”

“Should you want it, if you kiss the Mourning Lady of the Roses, you and Éponine will get the chance to have a thousand lives. It will always be changing, and it won’t be always what you expect it to be, but it will be an opportunity to be happy.”

“I have forgotten how it is to be happy,” Enjolras said plainly, still eyeing the morose sculpture. “But would that be all right with her?”

“When she wakes, she will get the chance to decide if it is. Your meeting will happen in different ways, Enjolras, so just take care to be wise and learn to be patient,” the King advised, making way for him to approach the Mourning Lady of the Roses.

Enjolras stepped in front of the statue, a pensive curl upon his lips as he laid a hand on hers, the one that held a rose over her heart. He wished to say a million things to her, but he preferred to say it in person. He will just have to trust the words of the dark-eyed King and hope for the best. He was about to press a gentle kiss upon the lips of her sculpture, but he realised something important.

It finally clicked.

“You are Morpheus, the God of _Dreams_.”

Morpheus merely nodded gravely. “Visionary,” he tutted, and yet Enjolras knew no malice was present in the King’s tone. “Now, go on, and learn how to be happy.”

He shook his head, and turned to face Éponine’s sculpture once more. The memory of her falling in the barricades made him shiver, and for some reason, kissing her on the lips did not feel right. He drank in the countenance of the statue more carefully this time, and at long last, pressed a kiss upon her brow.

All around him had suddenly become engulfed with the bright light of a million stars.

Enjolras closed his eyes.

_Just take care to be wise and learn to be patient._

_She will get the chance to decide if it is._

_A chance to have a thousand lives._

_Something beautiful._

* * *

The God of Dreams was right. They met in a thousand different ways. They became happy in a thousand different ways. They have lived in a thousand different ways.

And each time, they managed to fall in love, to their own surprise.

There was a time when they didn’t have the best impressions of each other when they met as students who wanted to run away from it all. There was that time when he was a Hunter fighting to end the long night, and they had to fight each other to death. There was that time when he had become a widower, and the love that they would come to have -- they built on slowly through conversations under the cover of winter and the darkness of the night.

Even more, there were others when they were always apart from each other. Too many wars where one or both of them dies, and their passion only apparent through a thousand letters. Too many battles where they did not gravitate towards each other immediately. Too many places where they were there at the same time, but never at the right pace with each other.

It didn’t always start or end like it was in the songs, yes, but what a life to have lived.

And now, caressing her cheeks for the thousandth time, his heart could only be filled with the warmth and happiness of her with him, always.

“Enjolras,” she whispered, eyes intently locked on his. “Ours is the glory, old and new.”

Let the tears fall freely on his face. He did not mind it, as long as they had each other. Theirs is the dream that others could only hope for -- they will finally have peace.

In one breath, they held each other.

“And ours is the song of tomorrow.”

**Author's Note:**

> I referenced some stories I have loved from the Enjonine fandom, and they are the following: 
> 
> \- Run Away With Me by textsfromumbridge/dutchmoxie  
> \- A Painting of Ash by decembersiris  
> \- Frostbitten Crimson by shadows-of-1832/SaoirseVictoire  
> \- Letters from the Frontline by short-macciato  
> \- When Apollo Met Persephone by astoryinred/Aurelia_Combeferre  
> \- don’t give away the end (the one thing that stays mine) by kylorenvevo/diasterisms
> 
> and more! I do greatly recommend a read of these fics and/or anything by these authors because they write so beautifully, and their stories have become a part of who I am. 
> 
> And I dearly hope that I could be part of your story, too. 
> 
> \--
> 
> P. S. I wrote this in a caffeine-induced haze until 5h00. So grammar mistakes be damned. Also all the flowers I mentioned? All of them are usually seen in funerals. Make of that what you could.


End file.
